


Witness to the lost

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [29]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Broodmothers (Dragon Age), Deep Roads (Dragon Age), Dwarves, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Orzammar, Post-Dragon Age: Origins Quest - A Paragon of Her Kind, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, Traumatized Tabris, Warden senses, non-warden POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-19 18:54:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19138657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Caitwyn Tabris returns from the Anvil of the Void.  She is not the same woman as when she left, and there is no hiding it.Her companions try to help her cope.It doesn't go well.Plus side: We get out of the Deep Roads!   Finally!





	Witness to the lost

Alistair did not sigh.  No, ser. He did not gaze forlornly in the direction Caitwyn had gone some eight days ago.  Eight days, or as close as he could tell underground, with nothing to do but keep watch and hope.  Hope that she would come back. If she didn’t—no, don’t even  _ think _ that, he told himself harshly.  She had to come back. And it wasn’t like he could find her easily even if he did go chasing after her.  Maker, it’d taken every scrap of will he’d had to watch her walk away. Not to trot up that bridge and follow her no matter what she said or that it would mean leaving the others without a Warden to sense darkspawn.

Never letting her go off alone again, that was for sure.

Maethor grumbled, the dog’s great head on his paws as he watched for his master’s return.  No one teased the  _ dog _ for waiting on Caitwyn.  Wasn’t the dog’s fault though, and Alistair scratched his ears.  That earned him a little wag, which was good to see. At least he could cheer up a dog.

Low standards those, but then put it out of his mind.  Unfortunately, with the darkspawn still avoiding the Thaig, there wasn’t much in the way of distraction.  They’d set up a perimeter like Caitywn had suggested, took turns at watch, and otherwise tried to shore up their supplies as best as possible and not think about what would happen if Caitwyn never came back.  At least he’d stopped being so sick while in the Thaig. Every now and again, when the wind through the Deep Roads blew just right, or just wrong, he caught a whiff of darkspawn corruption. The rank odor made his stomach twist, but it wasn’t enough to make him violently ill.

He filled his lungs, his own version of scouting he supposed, and then coughed on his own breath.  Maethor tilted his head back and forth at the sudden noise, so different from the subdued tones they’d all kept to lately.  Surely, he’d imagined what he’d just sensed. Wishful thinking. Still, it might not be. 

Standing, he ignored the glances from the others as he left the perimeter of their camp and crossed the bridge over the empty magma channel.  Maethor trotted beside him, nose twitching in an attempt to figure out what had prompted the movement. Alistair raised his head and shut his eyes before inhaling as deeply as he could.

The corruption hung heavy in the air beyond this point, like a wall of rot, but there was suddenly something else on the furthest edges of his senses.  It was only a flicker so he breathed in again.

“Alistair?”  Leliana’s voice called to him, but he kept his attention forward.  “Is something wrong?” He waved off her question, not knowing if he could voice what he’d sensed.  He filled his lungs again, and there it was, clearly this time. As if he’d been wandering lost in the woods, he caught the scent of cool, fresh water, and something else.  Something that would never be found so far underground and in the dark.  _ Lilacs _ .  Fresh water and lilacs

“She’s coming back,” he whispered, throat suddenly dry.  A grin flitted across his face before breaking into a grin.  He drew himself up and shouted gleefully, “She’s coming back!”

Several voices cried out at once: “Wait!” but Alistair did not wait.  He ran forward, Maethor sprinting beside him, the tunnels dark but he didn’t need light to find her.  She was moving fast closing in on their camp, and his heart skipped a beat. Even the pressing stench of corruption couldn’t stop him now, but the forking pathway could.  He skidded to a halt, Maethor whuffling and snuffling the stone floor to find which of the five tunnels his master was coming from.

Panting from the exertion of running while in full armor, Alistair could at least have the comfort of knowing she was close.  She was  _ alive _ , and she was coming back.  From the middle tunnel there was a hard boom and stomp of stone on stone and the rattle of heavy armor.  Alistair peered into the darkness, and just barely caught the glow of the golem’s eyes and runes. 

“Cait!” he called out, waving his arms like a lunatic.  “Cait you’re—”

The woman who emerged from the tunnel was not the same as the one who had left less than a span of days ago.  Her hair was shorn raggedly down to her scalp, and she moved with sharp, precise motion like she was a statue come to life.  It was her eyes that made his throat close up. Though they still gleamed in the darkness of the Deep Roads, the spark in them was gone and her face was an icy mask.  

His heart juddered to a stop, and he held his hand outstretched for her.  She came to a halt and frowned at him.

“You left your post at the Thaig?”  He’d grown used to her lilting voice and the dry tone she used most of the time, but this was beyond dry as to be flat.  Dull. Leaden.

“I… I sensed you coming.  So I thought, well,  _ we _ ,” he stressed that and pointed at Maethor.  Maethor who cautiously sniffed at his master’s hand.  Caitwyn allowed it, but did not so much as even pat the animal.  The dog whined, and Alistair wished he could do the same.

“So you abandoned your post?  Very well done, Alistair. I do hope the others have not suffered,” Morrigan drawled.  Her unsettling yellow eyes were sharp as knives, and she drew herself up tall and haughty next to Caitwyn.  “We should move swiftly and return. There is much to discuss.”

“Last I checked, Caitwyn is in charge, not you.”  He bared his teeth at the witch in a false smile, and she sneered at him in return.  Before she could reply, however, Caitwyn’s leaden voice broke into their prelude to an argument.

“Morrigan’s not wrong.  We need to go back, now, and everyone needs to know what we,” her mouth twisted like she’d just eaten something sour and bitter, “found.”

“Right, of course.”  He gave way, because what else could he do?  Glancing at Shale and Oghren, he hoped to find some suggestion of what had happened.  The golem was unreadable, and Oghren’s face was shadowed. They passed him by, the four of them who had been further down the Deep Roads than any other in centuries, weights on all of their shoulders.  Maethor whined again and leaned his heavy body against Alistair’s legs. Absently, he patted the massive Mabari. “I don’t know what to do, either. I really don’t.”

Except follow Caitwyn, and try to find out why she moved like living dead.

 

* * *

 

Leliana gasped, her hand covering the shocked ‘o’ of her mouth.  Unable to forestall herself at the ragged and pitiful sight of the Warden, she reached out to gently touch the young woman’s shoulder.  “Your hair.”

Caitwyn wrenched her shoulder back before Leliana’s fingertips so much as brushed her padded gambeson.  Dull green eyes bored into Leliana’s own. The bard curled her fingers away and clasped her hands together awkwardly.  The beds of her nails ached suddenly, and she ignored the phantom burn of flayed skin along her back. Her body was whole, now, but Leliana had known the torturer’s knife.  Had known the sinking despair and desperate need to flee unceasing agony. Had known how her whole self had fled even the kindest touch for long after.

“It’s just hair,” Caitwyn replied flatly.  Leliana wished to balk at that. It was not just hair, beautiful and curly as Caitwyn’s had been.  It was the mark of violence done to her, that the only way she had to cope was to cut something of herself away.  Even after Ostagar, Lothering, the Circle Tower, Redcliffe Caitwyn had retained her hair, had braided it back, had for a time Leliana to help her with it as if they were little more than young girls still content with ribbons and other pretty things.

Leliana bit her lip and said nothing more.  That girl was gone now, replaced by a woman who now kept her face as still and smooth as a frozen pond.  Then she caught sight of Alistair walking in Caitwyn’s wake, his face the very picture of bewildered and forlorn confusion.  She caught him by the arm, and he started at the touch. Seeing her, he sighed and his brows knit together as though he were in pain.

“Leliana, oh, um,” he faltered, fumbling at his own words.  “Sorry I just left like that, I was, I just. I’m sorry.”

“We are all glad she is returned to us,” Leliana told him.  It was true. The pressing fear that Caitwyn would perish in the Deep Roads had been a constant companion, but seeing her now only made Leliana wish they had  _ all _ gone ahead, risk of Blight sickness or no.  

“She’s not the same.”  His voice was hoarse, as if he’d already screamed, or as if he choked back tears.  Let by his heart, as ever.

“No, and once we find out why, it will be our task to help her, however we can.”  He grimaced at her attempt to be reassuring, and she wished she could offer him better.  She wished she could convince herself of something better, too.

“I don’t think she wants my help.”

“Remember what I said?  Be yourself Alistair. Be by her side, and be patient.  We cannot expect her to recover while in the Deep Roads, either.”

“I suppose.”

“Come, we should join the others,” she urged, tugging at his elbow.  He allowed himself to be led, and they sat around the small fire that had been kept going for eight days.  And that was when Leliana learned that there were worse things than torture, a fate worse than any death on the rack, and the glacial chill that had infested Caitwyn reached its icy fingers for Leliana’s own heart.

_ Maker preserve us, Andraste watch over us _ .  If they could, here in the depths of the world where the blackest horrors were committed in untold numbers.  How many women, she wondered. How many women?

And Leliana knew the question she asked herself was likely the same one that had pushed Caitwyn past the point of her endurance: would she be one of them?

 

* * *

 

“This, I remember.”  Shale traced the list of names with her—and how strange that was to think of herself as a she, and yet it was true—fingers of stone.  There it was, her name, as Caradin said, among the list of those who had volunteered to become golems.  _ Shayle of House Cadash. _

The Warden lingered next to her, its gaze scanning the area around them, her bow in her hands.  It kept to the shaft of sunlight, as if it could soak up the sun itself and banish the darkness that it had learned of in the Deep Roads.  Shale could dimly understand its agitation, its desire to be out of these places and far away from the Broodmothers. She had possessed a flesh body once, and the thought that darkspawn could have  _ altered _ her to their own ends made her stone lips grind together.  

She had chosen to be a golem, to become more than a soft creature of flesh and transform into the mighty thing she was now.   _ Her _ choice to lay herself upon the anvil and defend the dwarves that had been her people.  The so-called Paragon had given the women of her household no such choice, nor had the darkspawn.   

“So what now?” the Warden asked dully.  Shale did not care for the Warden’s desulatory tone.  She had not known the Warden long, this was true, but she thought she understood it’s habits.  It had been thoughtful, more so than any mage that had asserted ownership of her. 

“I will need to think on these things I have learned.  Perhaps I will speak to it soon. For now, let us carry on as we have.”  

“You’ll get no argument from me.”  

The Warden did not wait, did not linger, eager to be moving.  Though Cadash Thaig was close to the surface and shafts of sunlight broke through cracks in the high ceiling of the cave and vines of greenery hung low instead of spikes of calcified stone, it was clear the Warden did not relish being under the ground.  Shale could not blame it, but it was like having something stuck between some of her stone plates: it irritated.

Stomping after the Warden, Shale opined, “If it did not wish to come here, it need not have.”

“It was on our way back.  And you’ve a right to your own past.  Your memories. No matter what they are.”  The Warden spoke while keeping its gaze fixed straight ahead, examining the way they had come in case other vermin had come to investigate their dead fellows.  Shale did not believe the Warden, not entirely. It had sought after too many tasks, no matter how small, to fill the hours between them and Orzammar, as though by accomplishing many small things it could put one large thing out of its mind.  

Shale could tell it that things did not work that way, but the Warden was not in a listening mood.  

The revelations of the Deep Roads had struck something inside of the Warden, as Shale’s revelations and struck something inside of her.  All was not as she had thought it to be. She had once been soft and weak and vulnerable as the Warden was vulnerable. But the Warden had destroyed the Anvil, so it could not rid itself of its weakness so easily.  Perhaps it was trying to make itself as much like a golem as it could, to give itself a heart of stone.

For some reason, a reason Shale could not fully understand, she found that prospect… sad.  

 

* * *

 

Zevran thought the celebration for Bhelen’s coronation was a tad ostentatious after he had executed his rival on the floor of the assembly.  Oh, there was nothing wrong, per se, with a little murder. Especially if it was to protect one’s interests. It was the mark of a poor winner, however, to gloat when the bodies were not yet cold.  He let his eyes roam over the great and powerful of the dwarven kingdom, quietly bemused at his nearness to such power. Caitwyn, of course, had pride of place by the king’s side; she most obviously hated it.

Oh, she turned a grimace into a smile before others could notice, and she kept up fairly dutiful conversation, but the shadows in her eyes were deeper than the pits they had just escaped.  Bathed and scented and well fed for the first time in over a month, yet Caitwyn still appeared haggard and hollow, as though some part of her had been lost in the Deep Roads. She had allowed no one to touch her ragged re-growing curls, not even to tidy up for this event.

The night wore on, and the mood turned more and more sour.  Bhelen gloating, the guests drinking too much, and his own companions turned inward on themselves.  Only the witch was allowed near Caitwyn, but even she had retreated to a quieter place and left Caitwyn alone with the man the girl had declared king.  

Zevran took in the state of his companions, finding them all in various stages of drunk: from Alistair moodily staring into his wine cup to Leliana’s brittle yet still charming laughter to Oghren’s wild bellowing.  Few were in a state to assist the Warden, and it was an open question if Caitwyn would accept anyone’s help. Still, he knew something of having lost a part of one’s self, and he could at least allow her to escape gracefully.

When he turned back to ponder the high table once more only to find Caitwyn’s seat vacant.

There was no time to waste if she was already gone.  He slipped out of the main hall and ghosted through the passageways of the great palace.  Unlike some palaces, this one was built along straight lines, the dwarven love for geometric shapes evident from the bas relief carvings to their floor plans.  Alas, there was no sign of her on the way back to their rooms, the rooms so generously offered to them by the newly risen king. It had taken all of his and Leliana’s persuasion to convince Caitwyn that they most assuredly could  _ not _ refuse such an offer.  

Tilting his head, he strained his hearing passed the careening whirl of drunken revelry, and he heard heaving, shallow breaths coming from around the corner.  Letting his bootheels ring on the stones, he rounded the bend and found Caitwyn, back pressed to the wall of an alcove with her hands balled into tight fists at her side.

“My dear Warden, you left so suddenly,” he said softly.  The muscles of her jaw jumped, so easy to see in her thinned-out face.  

“I’m tired.  It’s been a long, long month.”  Her tone was even, and she was able to meet his gaze.  Yet he had the impression she was looking through him, past him, and then her eyes widened.  It was so startling to see any expression on her face that Zevran was nearly relieved. Then he heard the heavy, clomping tread of her fellow Warden.  Alistair trotted to a halt and rocked back on his heels as he glanced between Zevran and Caitwyn. A flush crept up the man’s neck and his brows furrowed.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting anything, but we all noticed you were gone, and I said I’d find you.”  The man glared at Zevran, as if to chastise him for  _ not _ informing the others of Caitwyn’s absence.  That  _ they _ had been inattentive was not his fault, and Zevran blithely ignored the man’s obvious irritation.

“I’m fine, Alistair.”  Alistair’s shoulders slumped as if the shortness of her tone was a physical blow, and Zevran’s eyebrows rose of their own accord.  The statement was a terribly obvious lie, so unusual for the girl who could lie so well. By the aching expression on Alistair’s face he knew it, too.

“Look, I didn’t mean to—” he began to say, but cut off as Caitwyn turned eyes like the green heart of a glacier onto him.  Zevran suppressed a sigh, and stepped into an incipit argument that he really should avoid. 

“I believe what Alistair means is that although you are undoubtedly able to look after yourself, the sheer number of drunk dwarves requires caution, and it would do well to avoid having to defend yourself.  We do not want a drunken Noble to be the reason we lose this alliance, is it not?”

“Yeah, that, what he said.”  Alistair caught on quickly, Zevran would give him that much credit.   _ Brasca _ , but he was going soft to be playing this part.  Caitwyn watched them both with dull, distant eyes, her mouth a thin, hard line.  Then she huffed and allowed her shoulders to drop from up around her ears. 

“That makes sense.”  With deliberate movements, she pulled away from the wall of the alcove and shuffled forward, but did not pass between himself and Alistair.  Instead, she waited until they backed up and she could pass them by without drawing too close to either of them. In silence they skirted packs of drunken Nobles, and made their way through the precise hallways of the palace to the suite of rooms they had been granted.  

Alistair jogged ahead and opened the door for them with a hopeful grin.  Caitwyn did not so much as acknowledge him, and Zevran patted the man’s arm as he passed him by.  Not long ago, she had held the man’s hand, had perhaps nearly kissed him if Zevran had read the situation correctly.  And now, now she was as distant and cold as the moon itself.

“Good night, Cait,” Alistair called after her, nearly desperate to be at least  _ seen _ .   She paused, her hand on the door of her bedroom and turned back to look at him over her shoulder.  Perhaps, there was something about her eyes that softened ever so slightly, the slightest arch of her brow, the parting of her lips.  Only to be dashed to the side in favor of her icy mask once more.

“Alistair, Zevran.”  A bare acknowledgement and little more, she turned and shut the door after herself and the massive animal she called a dog.  Zevran sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It was a sorry state of affairs, and Zevran pondered what could be done to alter it.

A heavy sigh from Alistair broke into his thoughts and he felt the stirring of pity as the other man sank onto a plush, richly upholstered couch, his head in his hands.

“Leliana said to be patient, and be myself, but I don’t think either of those are helpful,” the young man said, voice muffled by his own hands.  Zevran wondered how far he would get shaking the boy, but decided that such an attempt would prove fruitless. Alistair was not a small man.

“Are you asking me to offer you some advice, Alistair?”

“At this point, I’ll try  _ anything _ .”

“How gracious, your request,” he drawled.  Alistair winced, and his shoulders rounded further inward.  For such a large man, he could fold himself up rather well to occupy less space than he should.  A prudent habit for superfluous bastards, a hindrance for a possible king. 

“Sorry, I just.  I don’t know what to do.  She’s never been easy to read.  Ha, you should’ve seen her at Ostagar, not that you’d expect anyone to be light hearted right before engaging the darkspawn horde.”  The Warden scrubbed a hand over his stubbled face and sighed. “She was aloof, but not this  _ cold _ .  I’m worried for her, and I’m worried that nothing anyone does will help her.”

It was then he realized that the poor young man was more concerned about the girl in question than his own romantic prospects with her.  Zevran allowed himself a brief, silent lament for such well-meaning fools—though had he not benefited from one such, a woman who had offered him a second chance, no that was past now—and then sprawled on the couch next to Alistair.

“Alistair, my friend, I may call you such, yes?  If I am to offer you advice such as this, I think it best if we are friends.”  The human regarded him with shadowed hazel eyes. There was too much weariness in the face of a man so young, but then the young often felt such things keenly.  Though Zevran was hardly old himself, he had a good deal more experience than the confused boy on the couch. Age in leagues, perhaps, if not years.

“I suppose,” he sighed.  “Look, I just… don’t know what to do.  Maybe I shouldn’t have let her take charge—no, that’s not fair.  I  _ didn’t _ take charge and someone had to, so she did.  But I  _ can _ help her.  I was, for a while there, but I don’t know how to  _ help _ .  Leliana said to be myself, to be patient, but everything I do just seems to drive her away.”

Zevran sprawled on the couch and idly drummed his fingers across the back of it.  “You are reaching for her, and she dances away, yes? Then, my friend, do not reach for her.  Simply be present.”

“That’s… not helpful.  And I don’t see much of a difference between what I’ve been doing and what  _ being present _ means.”

“Thank on it, my friend, and perhaps you might find it the best advice you will ever receive.  But then, it is my advice, and thus it is priceless.” 

The Warden frowned, making his long features sharp and dangerous in the low firelight.  Zevran grinned like a pleased cat. With a vicious grunt, Alistair rose to his feet and stomped toward his room muttering under his breath all the while.  Hand on the door latch, the man abruptly straightened as if he had been struck by a mage’s lightning. Glancing back over his shoulder, Alistair met Zevran’s eyes, a silent apology in the arch of his brows.  Feeling gracious, he waved it away, and the other man slunk to his room to attempt to sleep.

Zevran did not.  With tired eyes, he watched the fire dance in the hearth, able to infer more of Caitwyn’s predicament than the girl would likely care for him to know.  He had seen it often enough in the Crows, in himself. She was wounded, perhaps to her core, and it was an open question if she would recover. Zevran, for the first time in a long time, found himself tempted to prayer.  Though he was not certain the Maker or even his lovely Bride would listen to one such as him even if he prayed for another. 

No, it would take mortal hands to undo whatever injury now festered in the girl’s heart.  Zevran simply did not know if any of them were up to the task.

 

* * *

 

The blue sky didn’t  _ end _ .  Stone save him, he couldn’t take his eyes off it.  But the Warden, Caitwyn, she turned her face up to the air that smelled of all sorts of things he couldn’t identify and her face softened for the first time since the Anvil.  He’d had to be party to killing his own wife, and the girl still had the worst of it.

Branka’s madness had another casualty, even if this one was still up and walking around.

So he drummed up a few words, asking her how she coped with that lot of nothing above her head.  Gave her something to do, taking some time to reassure him rather than live in her own head. Branka had been like that a bit, when an idea got ahold of her, it wasn’t just his wife he’d been dealing with.  It was the Idea, too. 

There was an Idea in the girl’s head, and Oghren knew he wasn’t the one to get it out of there.  But it gave him something to do instead of thinking about his mad, dead wife. Or look at the sky.  

Because he owed the girl, and he would pay the debt however he could.

 

* * *

 

“Watch the water,” Sten instructed.  Caitwyn stared at the lake, but her posture was incorrect.  Her shoulders too tight and drawn up, her back rigid. There was none of her usual fluid grace.  

“Don’t need your instruction anymore, Sten.  I think I’ve got this bit figured out.” Her lilting accept was clipped, an obvious display of irritation that she was not usually prone to.  

“Do you?  If that is the case, I shall leave you be,” he said stiffly.  Standing, he straightened his jerkin before striding back up the slope of the shore to camp.  Yet, before reaching the light of the fire, his step slowed and he regarded the young Warden more carefully.  

Her fingers curled into fists so tight the skin of her knuckles stretched and lightened, and she stared into the waters of Lake Calenhad as if she could lose herself in them.  As if those waters could take her far away from where she was. But the lake was bound by the land, and she would go far.

A frown creased his face.  Teaching her qunari methods of mind and body had been oddly rewarding, to see her grow in skill and assurance, to learn and thrive.  He had trained many young warriors before, but none had possessed the Warden’s precision or attentiveness. None had her  _ mind _ .  And yet now it was her mind that had turned on her.

Had she been a qunari, he would have given her into the care of the Tamassrans, to heal.  His people were far away, and he was of the Beresaad. He had given her all he could to find her way back to herself.  The rest was to her.

Sten watched her a moment longer, the short shock of her curls waving in the cool breeze over the lake.  A small form, her shadow stretched long and into the water by the light of the setting autumn sun; the last of summer lost to them during their time underground.  Much had been lost under the ground, and there was no retrieving all of it. He knew that lesson well.

With a soft grunt, Sten returned to the fire and ate his supper in silence.

Caitwyn remained where she was.


End file.
